The Necessity of Rest
by DSieya
Summary: When the nighttime comes, old memories and new fears surface. Small character sketches of eleven different characters. [oneshot, written before dh but in preparation for]


_this was posted before, but i just realized that ffnet took out whole lines of text and formatted this all funny, so i decided to take it off, comb through, then put it back up again. Dx anyhow, my last fic before i leave on vacation--i'll be gone from june 20th to august 7th. it's also on my profile (in case anyone happens to care)._

_dedication: to s/w, who i will not be able to talk to on july 22nd and who always knows what to write and how to write it. can't wait to get back to talk to you. :)_

_have fun with deathly hallows, everyone! this is my way of getting ready for it. :) set sometime during the book; what i think is going through the characters' heads._

* * *

When it is night and he is laying in bed, it always takes a while to get to sleep. He hates it. He is a poor potion-brewer and cannot make make a Sleeping Draught, so every night he gets between the covers, and lays there, and thinks. And with those Thoughts come the Memories, and with the Memories comes the Pain and Nostalgia. 

And he _hateshateshates_ it, because then he questions his past, his present, his future, and starts to think "_I've made a mistake_" and he should never—_never_—think that.

He doesn't remember a time without fear, as a child, a teen, an adult and—and whatever it is he is now. But the fear then wasn't like how it is now—gnawing, hopeless, infinite. He is unable to escape, not in his surroundings, not even in his thoughts and dreams. He is forever afraid, and he doesn't know why or how because he _shouldn't_ be—he hates his fear because it makes him feel spineless and misplaced.

He hates the fear so much he wishes for a time long gone. Of sunlight, and Quidditch, and friendship. That merges into the Whomping Willow and into a boy with glasses that made him so afraid and ashamed that he remembers the face as he kneels and cannot shake it.

Peter turns over in his bed and just tries to forget.

* * *

When it is night she is cold, and it is under the layer of darkness that she sheds her forcefulness and determination. She cries, silently, without any change to her breathing and she explains away the occasional sniffle as a head cold. 

Her voice doesn't get the nasal, weepy tone like it used to.

She always cries with her cheek against the pillow (her cloak), her stomach pressed against whatever it is she happens to be sleeping on that night. It is so cold and she has the irrational fear that the tears, however salty, would freeze her skin. That would take an explanation, which is what she has been avoiding.

She cries in dread, and for the tomorrow, because of past hurts and present sorrows. She cries because perhaps, somehow, she may just shed enough tears that Fate or God or whatever controls what she is going through would see her pain captured in gallons and let everything turn out all right.

When Hermione wakes up in the morning she doesn't think about her fear and is always as determined as ever.

* * *

When it is night, sleep comes easy to him, much like everything else. No, falling asleep is not the problem. 

The truth of his dreams is.

For his dreams are full of doubt and insecurity, and he can't—_can't—_have any hesitation, anything that someone _may_ happen to glean that shows his ineptitude.

It is not in his blood, not in his House, not in his pride. He goes with both feet forward and no falter in his step. Yet, when he sleeps, his dreams are all towers and lightening and doubt. Doubt in himself, in his situation, his choises, and the Cause. Yes, doubt in the Cause.

It is this kind of doubt that get people like Draco Malfoy killed.

* * *

When it is night, she is alone; when it is day, she is alone. Her loneliness presses in on her, isolates her; the loss of so many, so close, sometimes she feels so overwhelmed yet with no one to turn to. The loss of her confidant has had such an effect on her; alone in a high place, with the weight of the crown heavy, and she cannot trust even those she has known forever. 

_I'm not a girl anymore_, she reminds herself.

She is so tired, so tired of being alone, of not having someone to turn to. Her mind is heavy like the crown she bears, and it feels like those sorts of dreams where you're soaring, and soaring and then you start to fall. Only it's real life, this time, and _He_ was the one who fell, and now that He isn't there you're plummeting toward the ground.

And you have no idea how to save yourself.

_She doesn't know what will happen once she hits the ground; in the dreams, she wakes up, but in real life...?_

When Minerva walks out of her quarters she makes sure she is the leader everyone knows.

* * *

When it is night, it is silent, and the muffled blanket of the quietness scares him. The only sound—this is how he assures himself he's still alive—is the faint breathing on his left and the occasional snuffle of her crying on his right. She doesn't know he knows she is crying, because she hides it so well, but he never says anything to her on it. 

He has always been a firm believer that something always needs to be said, and it is not just during the night that it is silent – the day, too; they do not talk for their mental exhaustion, and it kills him. Sometimes he wants to scream and yell and dance around until his voice is gone.

He never knew that this would be so hard, and he feels so disconnected from the world and that is such a change from how he had always felt—part of something, anything, with support from behind and to the sides and in front.

Now it's just them.

But Ron puts his arm around her at night, and claps his shoulder in the day, and it is his way of telling them, "_We're still here_."

* * *

When it is night, she stares up at the ceiling, surrounded by plush down comforters and feather pillows. Her blue eyes watch the blue ceiling and the blue moon beams pepper across her room. As a girl she was jokingly referred to as the Ice Queen, and now she feels that acutely in her heart. 

She feels the fear for her family, for His anger, for her husband, and her son, both of whom are gone from her. She gets up from her bed, her feet like ice on the hardwood, and wanders about the dark house.

The servants know to not disturb her.

Her hands run over the velvets, and she feels a longing for the sight of her son sneaking out of the window like it has always annoyed her, for _his _cold, smooth hands on her face as their blue eyes just stare at each other for eternity.

Eventually she gets back into bed, and watches the indigo ceiling until sleep takes her.

Narcissa waits for the blue moon that will bring her family home.

* * *

When it is night, she dips her eagle feather quill into the rich, black ink and writes by the light of the lantern. She writes and writes and writes until her mind had nothing left to say. To her family, her daughter, her husband, to Sirius, to Dumbledore, to the girl in second year who jealously sliced off her smooth, shiny red hair. 

She feels so lost and misplaced and she doesn't know what is going on, so she just writes. Feelings. Events. Something cute her daughter did twenty years ago. Then she locks up the letters and never looks at them again.

She feels she has something to say to all these people, to her sisters, however horrible, to her cousins and her husband and everyone whose name she had put on the top of a paper. She feels the end coming, and she writes coolly and steadily until the end of the parchment and needs to tell everyone what she had thought of them, what she had done to them, what they have done to themselves.

She never sends them, but she feels the bonds of her letters to those they were meant for.

Andromeda writes because she is unable to put the world in sense.

* * *

When it is night, she puts her arms around her boyfriend and whispers in his ear. He is a restless, if not heavy, sleeper, yet she hopes her small words of comfort help. 

Her skin still tingles from his touch.

She never tells him it will all be all right. That is a false saying, because life just doesn't work that way. She is an optimist but not to the point of idealism. Things may turn out better, but it won't be all right.

She whispers jokes, and memories, and little funny things she heard at the office that day. She whispers about her mother and her father, and how they would fight to make up, and how she sees themselves turning that way at some point.

She mutters and murmurs about little mundane things—_"I put a paperclip in my hair today_"—because it is so completely normal and she likes that illusion.

Tonks talks until she falls asleep, her face buried in his neck and her long, Black fingers resting across his chest.

* * *

When it is night, she would pace to hear the rhythm of her feet pounding on the dusty, old wood of her bedroom. The gaping hole of her uselessness pushed her to run, and run, and run away from it. 

So she paced the small confines of her room, late at night, her small feet hitting the floor with dull thuds.

Sometimes she wanted to cry, and scream, and throw a tantrum but her mind kept telling her she was too old, and she had _hated_ being a kid, why would she want to go back now? She was unable to handle the secrecy, the unexposed, the uncertain future and him, _oh_, she would no longer see him…

She feared death so, and was useless to prevent it.

The constancy of the pacing put Ginny's mind to rest.

* * *

When it is night, he remembers. Home, Hogwarts, the Burrow. He remembers and this recollection does not ease him in times of trouble. 

It drives him on.

He remembers the faces of his godfather, and his mentor, and his classmates and family. He remembers the suits of armor and the chewed tapestries. Exasperation, elation, annoyance, grief. In the late of night memories strike him, of his parents, of things he used to have to strain to remember—now it comes easily.

He does not remember in nostalgia. It was a time past and he realizes that, and moves on. He does not bask in the happiness of former days—anyone who did so was eluding themselves, because true happiness only comes in fleeting moments, and it does not pervade.

He remembers because he needs to remind himself what he is fighting for, what this is worth.

Harry knows that is something he cannot forget.


End file.
